“Enya: A Treatise on Unguilty Pleasures” – review and reflection

It's been almost 9 months now, since the virus has turned the world upside down. Time, in which Chilly Gonzales birthed a song with Gary Barlow called "Oh What a Day" (alongside Barry Manilow on the same album), recorded a Christmas album and wrote a book about Enya. Some people would call every single element of each "bad taste" initially. Why? Because what we wear, like and listen to is a form of social demarcation. Take the typical hipster as an example: "somebody trying too hard to be different by rejecting anything that is deemed popular. […] hipsters aren’t actually different at all, they’re just people that are snobbier and more annoying about their taste in 'alternative' things, which are all popular now thanks to the other hipsters." (Urban Dictionary) The hipster is the extreme representation of a trap we fall prey to in different forms when we transition from innocent, uninfluenced children to beings who have learned about effect, reaction and manipulation. In an attempt to be cool, more distinct and outclass others, we deny things we actually love, and intellectually adopt what we think we should like. We foster those well-groomed pets in the rational chamber of our brains and cage the wild spirits that once lived in our souls and nurtured our emotions in the forbidden "guilt box". The book is a plea to rerelease our authentic, pre-adolescent, guilt-free selves – or rather that's the afflatus I draw from it.

A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.

Gonzales has released a book of etudes specifically geared towards a very large target audience; lapsed piano students. Remember way back, when your parents forced you to sit down in front of the piano and practice while all the other kids were outside riding their bikes? The piano seemed torturous, and you caused your parents so much grief that they eventually let you quit piano. Now you have regrets and wish there was some way to re-introduce yourself to the piano so you can finally feel that sense of musical accomplishment (and possibly inspire your own family).

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In the computing industry, source code is the key to practically every electronic item currently produced. If you have the source code to an application, you can study it, modify it, and (sometimes) release new versions. Writing great code is definitely an art form; it can be elegant, efficient, and channel the personality of the developer. It’s relatively easy to understand and replicate code once it has been written, but it’s an entirely different matter to develop a piece of brilliant code in the first place.

What does source code have to do with Chilly Gonzales?